As anticipated, the Counter class (which contains a mutable member of type int&) compiles under Visual Studio, but doesn’t under clang 3.2 or gcc (which is correct according to the C++ standard). What’s great about LiveWorkspace is how quickly you can switch between compilers to see how they like the same code. For example, the amended code that treats int& as a template parameter compiles under g++ 4.7.2 and 4.8, but doesn’t under clang 3.2: